Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh was born in India, and went to Stuart Hall, a Girls' Preparatory School in the USA. She received her BA in Philosophy and Religion from Wellesley College, her MA from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD from Temple University.

She is the Crawford Family Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Colby Collge in Maine, USA. Her interests focus on poetics and feminist issues. Her areas of expertise include Sikhism, Eastern sexuality, Indian women's issues, major religions of northern India, the role of women in religious literature, literary analysis of scripture and religious themes in Western literature.

Nikky Singh has published extensively in the field of Sikhism, including The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus (HarperCollins and Penguin), Metaphysics and Physics of the Guru Granth Sahib (Sterling). Her book on Sikhism, Sikhism: World Religions (New York: Facts on File) 1993, was translated into Japanese. She has lectured widely in North America, England, France, India, and Singapore, and her views have been aired on television and radio in America, Canada, and India.